London Match

by Len Deighton

  ‘Hello, you old bastard,’ said Axel, getting me into focus. ‘You look terrible. Still up to your tricks?’

  ‘Just say hello,’ I said. ‘She’ll be hurt if you forget her.’

  ‘Okay, Bernd, I won’t forget. You know my wife, don’t you?’

  I said hello. I hadn’t recognized the woman in the silver dress as Axel’s wife. Every other time I’d seen her she’d been in a grimy apron with her hands in the sink.

  By the time I took the plates of food, cutlery, and black bread to Lisl, I was too late. Old Lothar Koch had already brought a plate for her. He was sitting beside her, embarrassed perhaps to see her here and explaining his sudden recovery from the influenza that had prevented him dining with her the previous evening. Koch was a shrunken little man in his middle eighties. His ancient evening suit was far too big for him, but he’d long ago declared that his life expectancy precluded him wasting money on new clothes. I said hello to him. ‘Miracle drugs,’ said Lothar Koch to me and to Lisl and to the world at large. ‘I was at death’s door last night, Bernd. I was just telling Frau Hennig the same thing.’ I called her ‘Lisl’ and he called her ‘Lisl’, but when he talked to me about her she had to be ‘Frau Hennig’, even when she was sitting there with us. He was like that. He wiped his large nose on a crisp linen handkerchief.

  I decided to abandon both plates of food. What I really needed was a drink. I joined a big crowd at the table where an overworked waitress was dispensing champagne.

  ‘That’s a bloody good costume,’ remarked a very young sheriff doffing his ten-gallon hat to a man dressed as a Berlin cop. But the man dressed as the cop was not amused. He was a Berlin cop, desperately trying to find someone who’d left a light-blue Audi blocking the entrance to the underground garage.

  ‘Cocktails to the right, champagne to the left,’ said a waitress trying to disperse the crowd.

  I moved forward and got a bit nearer to the drinks. In front of me there was an elderly architecture lecturer talking with a delicate-looking female student. I knew them both as people I’d met with the Volkmanns. The lecturer was saying ‘…leaving politics to one side, Hitler’s plans for a new Berlin were superb.’

  ‘Really,’ said the pale girl; she was a history student. ‘I think the plans were grotesque.’

  ‘The Anhalter and Potsdam railway stations were to be rebuilt to the south of Tempelhof so that the centre of the city could have an avenue three miles long. Palaces, magnificent office buildings, and a huge triumphal arch. On the northern side there was to be a meeting hall with a dome eight hundred and twenty-five feet across with space inside for one hundred and fifty thousand people.’

  ‘I know. I went to your lectures about it,’ said the girl in a bored voice. ‘Afterwards I went to the library. Did you know that the only part of Hitler’s plan ever put into effect was the planting of deciduous trees in the Tiergarten? And that only restored the old mixed forest that Frederick the Great had felled to help pay for the Silesian Wars.’

  The lecturer seemed not to have heard. He said, ‘City planning needs firm central government. The way things are going, we’ll never see a properly planned town anywhere.’

  ‘Thank God for that,’ said the bored girl. She picked up two glasses of champagne and moved away. He recognized me and smiled.

  As soon as I’d got my champagne I began looking for somewhere to sit. Then I saw Werner. He was standing in the doorway that led to his bedroom. He was looking harassed. I went across. ‘Quite a party, Werner,’ I said in admiration. ‘I was expecting a small sit-down for eight or ten.’

  He ushered me into the bedroom. Now I saw how enough space had been cleared for the dancing. Furniture was packed into the bedroom so that it was piled almost to the ceiling. There was only just space enough for Werner and me to stand. He closed the bedroom door.

  ‘I just have to have a few minutes to myself,’ he explained. ‘Zena says we need more ice, but we’ve got tons of ice!’

  ‘Well, it’s a hell of a spread, Werner. I saw Axel…Axel Mauser dressed up like I’d never believe. Is he still working for the police?’

  ‘Axel’s wife got a big promotion in AEG. She’s some kind of executive now and they’re moving out of that lousy apartment in Märkisches Viertel to a place near the forest in Hermsdorf.’

  ‘You’d better give Tante Lisl a kiss and a formal greeting,’ I said. ‘She keeps asking where you are. In her day, the host and hostess stood at the door and shook hands with everyone as they were announced.’

  ‘Zena loves this sort of party,’ said Werner, ‘but it’s too noisy for me. I come and hide. I don’t know half those people out there. Would you believe that?’ He wrung his hands and said, ‘Did you go and see Lange?’ He straightened some of the dining-room chairs that were stacked one upon the other. Then he looked at me, ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I phoned him and went across there this morning.’

  Werner nodded mournfully. ‘He’s still the same, isn’t he? Still bad-tempered. Remember how he used to shout at us when we were kids?’ Werner wasn’t looking at me. Stuck under the seats of the dining chairs there were manufacturers’ labels. Werner suddenly began reading one as if deeply interested in the dates and codes.

  ‘I didn’t realize how much he hates Bret Rensselaer,’ I said. ‘Lange still blames Bret for his having to leave the Department.’

  Werner abandoned his study of the label and gave me a little smile that showed no sympathy for Lange. ‘He only says that because he’s been on the shelf ever since. When Lange resigned from the Department he thought he was going to get a wonderful job somewhere else and go back and show your dad and all the rest of them what a big success he was.’

  ‘I don’t know what he lives on,’ I said.

  ‘His wife inherited her parents’ apartment in Munich. They lease it out and live on the income from it.’

  ‘I was followed this morning, Werner,’ I said. I drank the rest of my champagne. What I needed was something stronger.

  He looked up sharply and raised his eyebrows. I told him about the bearded man and the way I’d been kidnapped and held in East Berlin.

  ‘My God!’ said Werner. He went white. ‘And then they released you?’

  ‘I wasn’t really worried,’ I told him untruthfully. ‘It was obviously just to throw a scare into me.’

  ‘Perhaps taking a job in Washington would be the best course.’

  ‘You’ve never worked in an embassy,’ I reminded him. ‘Those people live in a fantasy world…Ritz crackers, white wine and randy wives. I had six months of that; never again.’

  ‘Do you think it was Fiona’s idea? What was behind it?’

  ‘I just can’t decide,’ I said.

  ‘A doctor and a nurse…pretending they had your son…too bizarre for Fiona. It smells like Moscow.’

  ‘I’d prefer to think that.’

  ‘You’ll report it, of course,’ said Werner.

  ‘I don’t come out of it too well, do I?’

  ‘You must report it, Bernie.’

  ‘How did they get to hear about the vacancies coming up in Washington?’ I said.

  ‘The word gets round quickly,’ said Werner cautiously. He guessed what I was going to say.

  ‘You know who automatically gets first notice of any changes in Washington, don’t you?’ I said.

  Werner came closer to where I was standing and lowered his voice. ‘You’re not getting some sort of obsession about Bret Rensselaer are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Obsession?’

  ‘You keep on about him. First it was those code names…about how no agent ever had two names. And you try to persuade me that there is still a KGB man in London Central.’

  ‘I’ve told you no more than facts,’ I said.

  ‘No one can argue with facts, Bernie. But the Bret Rensselaer role you’re trying to write into this script of yours is not something that has emerged from calm and rational reasoning; it’s personal.’

  ‘I
don’t give a damn about Bret,’ I said.

  ‘You know that’s not true, Bernie,’ said Werner in a sweet and reasonable voice. ‘You went round to Lange knowing that he hates Bret. You wanted to hear someone say that Bret was some kind of monster who deliberately wrecked the early networks. You knew what Lange was going to say before you went; we’ve both heard all that rigmarole from him a hundred times. If you’re trying to put a noose round Bret’s neck, you’ll need something a damn sight more reliable than Lange’s gossip or news about vacancies in Washington. You try and prove Bret a bad security risk and you’re going to make a fool of yourself.’

  ‘Why would I want to do that?’ I protested.

  ‘There was a time when you suspected he was having an affair with Fiona…’

  ‘I was wrong,’ I said quickly. Werner looked up; I’d said it too damned quickly. ‘There was no substance in that,’ I added, more calmly this time.

  ‘You resent Bret. No matter how irrational that might be, you resent him.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s rich and charming and something of a ladies’ man. I resent him too; he’s too damned smooth, and he has a cruel streak in him. But keep your head, Bernie.’

  ‘I’ll keep my head.’

  Werner was not convinced. ‘Bret has everything going for him. Bret is an Anglophile: everything British is wonderful. The British like hearing that kind of praise – it’s exactly what they believe – and so Bret is very popular. You won’t find it easy to move against him.’

  ‘I’ve already discovered that,’ I said. ‘For all Silas Gaunt’s caustic remarks and Dicky Cruyer’s bitter envy of him, neither of them would be happy to see Bret facing a board of enquiry.’

  ‘Bret’s an old-fashioned US gentleman – honest and brave.’

  ‘Is that the way you see him?’

  ‘It’s the way he is, Bernie. He’s not KGB material. Promise me you’ll think about what I’m telling you, Bernie. I don’t give a damn about Bret. It’s you I’m thinking of. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Sure I do, Werner. Thanks. But I’m not gunning for Bret. I just want to talk with Stinnes and get a few ends tidied away.’

  ‘Did you wonder if the Stinnes defection might be a KGB stunt?’

  ‘Yes, lots of times, but he’s given us some good ones; not wonderful, but good,’ I said. ‘And now it looks like the Miller woman was murdered. She was a long-term agent, Werner. Would they really kill one of their own just to make Stinnes look kosher?’

  ‘We haven’t found her body yet,’ said Werner.

  ‘Leaving it inside the ambulance would make it too easy for us,’ I said. But Werner was right: until we had an identified corpse, there was always the chance that she was alive.

  ‘Then what about the chances of Brahms Four being a KGB plant?’

  I thought about it before answering. ‘I don’t think so.’

  But Werner noticed my hesitation and followed it up. ‘Did von Munte really need to be brought out of the East? He was an old man and so was his wife. How long before he’d be old enough to make one of those permitted visits to the West?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Werner. Officials with his sort of confidential information are not permitted to come West on visits, even if they live to be a hundred years old.’

  ‘But suppose von Munte was a plant? Sent to give us dud information. You said Silas Gaunt was difficult and protective when you tried to question him. Suppose London Debriefing Centre have already detected that he’s a KGB plant. Suppose they’ve lodged him with Silas Gaunt to keep him on ice and make sure he doesn’t do any damage.’

  ‘That would require a faith in the brilliance of the London Debriefing Centre staff that I just can’t muster,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what I mean, Bernie. You’re determined to see it the way you want it.’

  8

  Christmas was gone but, having been on duty, I had my Christmas leave to come. I took the children to the circus and to the theatre. We did the things they wanted to do. We inspected the model ships and real planes on the top floors of the Science Museum, the live reptiles in the Regent’s Park zoo and the plaster dinosaur skeleton in the hall of the Natural History Museum. The children had seen it all before, over and over again, but they were creatures of habit and they chose the things they knew so well so that they could tell me about them, instead of me telling them. I understood this pleasure and shared it. The only thing that marred these delightful events was that Gloria had no leave days to enjoy and I missed her.

  I took the children to see George Kosinski, their uncle and my brother-in-law. The place we visited was not one of his swanky motor-car showrooms but a dirty cobbled yard in Southwark. One-time marshland, the district was now a grimy collection of slums and sooty factories interspersed with ugly new office blocks as rent increases drive more and more companies south of the River Thames.

  George Kosinski’s repair yard was a derelict site; a place that had been hit by a German bomb in 1941 and never subsequently built upon. Next to the yard was a heavy and ornate block of Victorian flats that had become slums. Across the road, more recent municipal housing was even worse.

  George’s yard was protected by a high wall into which broken glass had been cemented to discourage uninvited callers. For those more difficult to discourage there were two guard dogs. Along the other side of the yard there was a railway viaduct. Two arches of the viaduct had been bricked up and converted to repair shops, but one section of the arched accommodation had been made into an office.

  George was sitting behind a table. He was wearing his hat and overcoat, for the small electric fan-heater did little to warm the cold damp air. The ceiling curved over his head and nothing had been done to disguise or insulate the ancient brickwork of the arch. In a cardboard box in the corner there were empty beer and wine bottles, cigarette butts, broken glass and discarded Christmas decorations. Through the thin partition that separated this makeshift office from the workshop there came the sound of rock music from a transistor radio.

  George Kosinski was thirty-six years old, although most people would have thought him five or even ten years older than that. He was a small man with a large nose and a large moustache, both of which looked inappropriate, if not false. The same could be said of his strong cockney accent to which I had to get freshly attuned each time I saw him. His suit was expensive: Savile Row, with the lapels stitched a little too tight so as to make the handwork evident. His shirt, his shoes, which were resting on the table amid the paperwork, and his tie were all as expensive as can be. His hair was curly, and greying at the temples to give him the distinguished appearance that is the result of regular visits to the hairdresser. Whatever he economized on, it was not his clothes or his transport, for outside there stood his gleaming new Rolls.

  ‘Well, here we are. You’ve come to beard your Uncle George in his den, have you?’ He took his feet off the table with a sigh. I had the feeling that he’d contrived that posture for our entrance. He liked to think of himself as unconventional.

  The children were too awed to reply. Leaning back in his chair George banged on the wall with the side of his fist. Someone next door responded to this command, for the radio was immediately turned down.

  ‘Your father’s come to buy a beautiful car from me – did he tell you that?’ He looked up at me and added, ‘It’s not arrived yet.’ A glance at his watch. ‘Any minute now.’

  ‘We’re a bit early, George,’ I said.

  ‘Can’t give you a drink or anything. I don’t keep anything of any value here. You can see what it’s like.’

  I could see. The cracked lino on the floor and the bare walls said it all. As well as that, there was a notice that said WE DON’T BUY CAR RADIOS. He saw me looking at it and said, ‘All day long there are people in and out of here trying to sell me radios and tape recorders.’

  ‘Stolen?’

  ‘Of course. What would these tearaways be doing with an expen
sive car stereo except that they’ve ripped it out of some parked car? I never touch anything suspect.’

  ‘Do you spend much time here?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘I call in from time to time. You run a business, any sort of business, you have to see what’s happening. Right, Bernard?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ George Kosinski was a rich man, and I wondered how he endured such squalor. He wasn’t mean – his generosity was well known and admitted even by those with whom he struck the tough bargains for which he was equally well known.

  ‘Rover 3500; you’ll not be sorry you bought it, Bernard. And if I’m wrong, bring it back to me and I’ll give you your money back. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. He was saying it to the children as much as to me. He liked children. Perhaps his marriage would have been happier if he’d had children of his own.

  ‘I saw it yesterday morning. Dark green, a beautiful respray, just like a factory finish, and the people doing the waxing job are the best in the country. You’ve got a vintage car there, Bernard. Better than that: a special. The V-8 engine has scarcely been used.’

  ‘It’s not another one of those cars that’s been owned by that old lady who only used it to go shopping once a week and was too nervous to go more than twenty miles an hour?’ I said.

  ‘Naughty,’ said George with a smile. ‘Your dad is naughty,’ he told the children. ‘He doesn’t believe what I’m telling him. And I’ve never told a fib in my life.’ Suddenly there came a thunderous roar. Billy flinched and Sally put her hands on her head. ‘It’s the trains,’ said George. ‘They’re only just above our heads.’

  But George’s boast had captured Billy’s imagination and when the sound of the train diminished he said, ‘Have you really never told a fib, Uncle George? Never ever?’

  ‘Almost never,’ said George. He turned to me. ‘I have a friend of yours calling in this morning. I told him you’d be here.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘It’s not a secret or anything?’ said George. ‘I won’t get into trouble for telling somebody where you are, will I?’ It was a jest, but not entirely a jest. I’d heard the same sort of resentment in the voices of other people who had only a rough idea of what I did for a living.